by: S. Scott Stanikmas

John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of those classic holiday films that needs to be watched as a yearly tradition. Like Jaws around the Fourth of July or Gremlins and Die Hard at Christmas, Halloween exemplifies the end of October celebration for me.

There have been numerous half-assed sequels and a remake that many purists would rather forget, so you can imagine how the fanbase is taking it now that the team behind the later installments of the SAW franchise is taking a stab at Michael Myers.

Thankfully, I’m getting the feeling that director Marcus Dunstan wants to do right by this property. In an interview with The Myers Fan he talks about a lot of things related to the film he’s helming and co-writing with Patrick Melton.

Take the actual title, Halloween Returns. Dunstan has an interesting look at how a little typo in copyrighting could make a difference in the film’s tone:

Halloween, if you have a semicolon, Returns — I think I put it in an email as a subtitle, but I think it was registered as Halloween Returns, which is fine. I like that, and it works, it does function as what it means to say. But if you commit a violent act, sometimes you get returns. What are the repercussions of being a violent entity? In that case, Halloween Returns could mean a number of things.

As far as story goes, he’s looking at the whole returns thing, and how past events come back to haunt you. Most recently this has been the plot being bandied about on Bloody Disgusting:

The now 18-year-old child of one of Myers’ victims plays a central role along with the child of a cop whose long been obsessed with Myers’ case, even putting it before his own daughter. Myers is now on death row and the two kids with their own personal vendettas against the killer sneak in to watch his execution. But when things go awry and Myers escapes, the pair, along with their friends, find themselves in the firing line.

You can tell Dunstan loves films himself and is a bit of a geek (and proud of it). He wants us as Halloween fans to get that same feeling for the reveal of Myers that Star Wars fans got seeing Han Solo and Chewie in The Force Awakens trailer. And he says that Michael Myers is about “subtlety and suspense” and how these things don’t cost a ton of money to produce. He plans on using the original film as the template for everything he’s working on.

I’m a little more interested now than I was before. Hopefully Dunstan can create something that will become just as much an October 31^st staple as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street or Texas Chainsaw Massacre.